I've always felt like it's not intended for us (the living) to know. But I've always had a hard time accepting the idea of a concrete afterlife in the sense of Heaven or Hell. Here's why: despite what most religions teach, why the hell (pun!) would your actions over 70+ years on this planet directly determine what sort of divine retribution you'll face for eternity? ETERNITY. Like, forever and ever and ever. And ever and ever.

Most people can't get their DVR figured out in their lifetime, let alone how to be a good person & a solid grasp on on religion and all that it entails.

This. It seems so very unfair to judge a person based on so little. We are very stupid creatures essentially. Even with all the things we can do, we're very basic. We have very basic needs and wants and we act like children most of the time. I sometimes feel like a kid, I sometimes am completely irrational and selfish and stupid -- probably more often than not. I just don't feel that even when we're SMART we really understand everything. We understand so little.

I like to believe there is something after death. The world we live in and seeing the poverty and cruelty of humans on so many levels, I honestly don't know how one can really accept that this can just be it. If peace is impossible on this earth then there needs to be something somewhere that has it.

I've also read up on NDEs and had experience along with people I know on things that one can't always see and some may never (the supernatural or spiritual if you call it). Too many coincidences on things to deny or wonder on anything more than what we're facing. I will say though that once you open that door to these type of things it's a bit hard to shut them out completely in your life.

I don't really think it has to do with religion and for all we really know it could be something that people never even imagine what it would be. I'm open to any of those type of possibilities and who knows maybe we'll never really know about them until we die.

I still hold onto a bit of the belief that we see Christ at the gates and that everything 'on earth as it is in heaven', only it's left in the state without the pollution and everything we do to the planet. Who really knows.

Increasingly i believe that humans are merely an over-evolved ape with delusions of grandeur, and one of those delusions is the idea of an afterlife for us. Its like we're too special to die.

We live, we die. I wasn't around in 1814 to worry about not being alive and i won't be around in 2114 to worry about it neither. Frankly speaking, i've had enough of this life to know that i don't want another one, or an everlasting one for that matter! It would probably be a nightmare - and a never ending one at that!

Once the body dies, we die. To speak of a "soul" increasingly makes no sense to me, as when for instance the physical brain is damaged it can change our entire personality, or whole character. So even who we are as individuals results not from inherent qualities such as a soul, but merely from the physical brain we were born with. We cannot be divorced from our physical self here on this Earth. When our body dies, how then can we be separate from it?

Science increasingly tells us what the cold hard reality is, but i think our emotions as well as our inflated sense importance and grandeur prevent us from being able to deal with it.

Sure agree that it is mainly our egos that can't imagine the nothing before we are born and the nothing thereafter. A fierce need to go on somehow, anyhow, is that barrier to help us get out when we've lost our brain, or our mobility, or independence, or basic functions, etc.

Can we ever come to the point of accepting death as part of the life cycle and take matters into our own hands when all quality of life is gone? We can go to the moon, go to Mars, chart our genes, etc. but not this. Sometimes I fantasize I'll find a civilized way without going to jail and that will be a parting gift. There can be terrible, terrible suffering at the end. To what purpose?

Sure agree that it is mainly our egos that can't imagine the nothing before we are born and the nothing thereafter. A fierce need to go on somehow, anyhow, is that barrier to help us get out when we've lost our brain, or our mobility, or independence, or basic functions, etc.

Can we ever come to the point of accepting death as part of the life cycle and take matters into our own hands when all quality of life is gone? We can go to the moon, go to Mars, chart our genes, etc. but not this. Sometimes I fantasize I'll find a civilized way without going to jail and that will be a parting gift. There can be terrible, terrible suffering at the end. To what purpose?

You should return to Europe, Tina. The powers that be there are coming around to your view of a controlled, civilized ending for life made by the individual as one of their fundamental human rights, in conjunction with medical professionals. Some countries here well on the way down that path. If we live in a truly free society then i guess we do have to ask ourselves whether we have the right to make the ultimate choice - that being over our own life.

A fundamental human right? Good Grief, might get hung for that idea. Know about Switzerland, but it still has to be a terminal illness. Many horrors (for the old, I mean) can go on and on and on.........

Nah, I must turn inventor or keep my peace before the entire thread is wiped out.

I believe that when "released from our mortal coil" we experience complete joy, freedom, and the ecstasy of shedding a cumbersome, weary body and uniting with our source -- in my belief, this would include basking in God's love and light. I believe we will experience a review of our lives, and recognize our mistakes and see our true selves. Beyond that, we'll only know when that day comes. It will be a rebirth / return home.

I used to experience a lot of anxiety over what I believed happened when we died. I don't want to get religious, but I used to worry a lot about measuring up and what if I was wrong, etc. These days I really don't worry about it at all. I have come to expect that nothing happens when we die. I don't claim to know for certain, but I haven't been convinced by any evidence that anything happens at all, and surprisingly I'm really fine with that. I have enjoyed a lot of my life, and endured a lot of it too, and I consider the bad to have been necessary and the good to be gravy and anything else I get from life is just more gravy. I'm not too selfish; I don't need there to be any more than this. I try to live every day like I really mean it. And if I'm wrong, then I think I'll be pleasantly surprised. Very surprised to say the least. But no matter how I try, I just can't imagine a reality in which I will be condemned by an omnipotent deity for merely trying my best to make this life the best possible life that it can be, so I simply don't worry about that possibility.

Dare I mention that there is such a thing as Death Cafe where people meet to talk about it. This exists world-wide. In fact, went to one recently not sure what I was expecting, but was surprised at how many people attended and how young. The main concern expressed was the hereafter, no concern to me. I mentioned my practical worries, which did not generate comments.

There was a nice handout of reading references. Found a few in the library and have been reading several books on the subject. It seems we are on our own.

Death assumes an 'individual'. We are not indivisible. This makes the finality of death moot as we're in a constant decay. Following this logically, I have 'died' and am in a present state of repeated 'death'. The assemblage that gives me identity is always trading pieces of itself to continue the pattern that makes me, 'me'.

My identity is an ever-changing model of atomic pieces. I am not my memory, nor my experiences, nor even the agency that is writing this reply. My illusion of agency takes credit for actions decided by a mind whose decisions I have little deliberation over.

I might be unclear. The idea is really cemented in my head and I could be skipping descriptions that would matter to someone unfamiliar.

Death is frightening to me because I have evolved a necessity to live. Death is, in reality, something I have 'experienced'. If you can really call a cessation of a particular order of self 'experience'. The thing I have not experienced yet is an absolute discontinuation of an illusion of agency and false continuity. I say 'illusion' because our 'self' is not contained to a single part of the brain and we are conscious, 'over-time' with the recruitment of many areas and the delay causes us to perceive and live in a slight past. This isn't even addressing the issue of the biological limitations that constitutes 'living' (i.e. sensory limitation).

I'm going to end this before it gets rambly. I'm not even sure why I tried explaining it without wanting to write the requisite novel.

TL;DR I am not alive in the traditional conception of, 'living', to die. Life and death are hyperbolic, simplified ideas of a much more nuanced thing.

It used to scare the living crap out of me believing this, but i've come to terms with it. It's the life cycle, why be arrogant enough to wish for an eternal life? What we have now, in itself, is so improbable, such a quantum fluke, that we have to embrace every moment we are allowed by nature to breathe.